Programs
Buffalo Nations Summer Fellowship
The Buffalo Nations summer student fellowship is an immersive land-based education opportunity in which students work full-time tending Indigenous gardens, conducting Indigenous plant restoration, participating in Indigenous community cultural events including buffalo harvest, learning to wild harvest and process plants, seed saving and more. This education opportunity is multicultural and intergenerational based on Indigenous methods of knowledge sharing. Applications for the summer fellowship are available each spring by contacting our program.
Ancestral Seed Bank
The Ancestral Seed Bank located in American Indian Hall is a living seedbank in which students are responsible for cleaning, tending, and propagating heritage seeds, including corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and medicinal plants. The seed bank is an educational laboratory and a resource for seed sharing with Indigenous organizations and community horticultural programs in the Buffalo Nations Biocultural Region. An annual distribution of seed bundles is done each spring through our partnership with the Montana Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative, 501(c)-3.
Gardens
The Buffalo Nations gardens currently include an Indigenous Culinary Garden located behind the American Indian Hall, the Ancestral Seed Garden located on the MSU Horticulture Farm/Towne’s Harvest Garden, and the Indigenous Learning Garden at the Story Mill Community Park in Bozeman.
Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Food Systems
The Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Food Systems will be offered beginning in Spring 2025 through the Department of Native American Studies, in collaboration with the College of Education, Health, & Human Development. This one-year, 12-credit certificate can be combined with any baccalaureate degree to give students a deep grounding in the buffalo nations food system, Indigenous foodways, and the seasonal round. Instruction will be online and community-based in a seasonal-ecological model of learning.
Buffalo Nations Scholarships & Fellowships
Current or admitted graduate students in the Indigenous Food Systems Certificate Program can apply for a Buffalo Nations Scholarship. Scholarships will be offered through a competitive application and interview process, developed and conferred by a committee composed of advisory council members, MSU faculty, staff, and student representatives. Itis our express goal to develop an Indigenous Food System Knowledge Network for the Buffalo Nations biocultural region across the Great Plains. This scholarship serves to cover the full costs of tuition and fees for the one-year online certificate. Buffalo Nations is offering a limited number of scholarships to this program to build capacity for intertribal food sovereignty. Scholarship priority to the program is given to those engaged directly in the Indigenous food sovereignty work of their communities. Tribal college instructors/staff are encouraged to apply.
Steward-to-Steward Exchange
The Steward-to-Steward Exchange is a program for Indigenous farmers, buffalo caretakers, and cattle ranchers, gardeners, foragers, and other caretakers of the land in the Buffalo Nations biocultural region to connect with one another through a paid work exchange. Following the historic Indigenous grassroots movement, Campesino-a-Campesino, Indigenous land stewards will be connected with a fellow steward in the region for a paid 2-day work exchange affording an opportunity to visit each other’s farm, ranch, and/or community, to spend time together visiting and sharing Indigenous perspectives as food producers and land caretakers.
